Getting Back In the Swim After Sandy

By

Sophia Hollander

April 5, 2013 9:23 p.m. ET

The rebirth of the New York Aquarium began at 4 a.m. the Friday after superstorm Sandy when its director waded chest-deep into a flooded, underground passageway and trained his flashlight on tanks housing sea horses and starfish. They were alive.

"That was such a tremendous lift because it's like, 'God we didn't lose everything,''' director Jon Dohlin said Thursday. "'We can leap into action now—we can get those animals out of there.'"

Five months later, the aquarium remains a construction site, with cranes topping the trees outside and several exhibits still in ruins. The Coney Island institution is scheduled to reopen to the public May 25, with about half the sites restored. Those include Glover's Reef featuring sea life from Belize, outdoor viewing areas for walruses, sea lions, sea otters and penguins, and a renovated Aquatheater with a new sea lion demonstration. Pricing hasn't yet been determined, officials said.

More than 80% of the aquarium's 12,000 animals survived the storm. Still, a full restoration—including new flood protection measures—will cost about $65 million, officials estimate. That figure could change, official cautioned.

Aquarium to Reopen After Sandy

A viewing area at the New York Aquarium penguin enclosure is repaired ahead of a partial reopening. Adrian Fussell for The Wall Street Journal

Workers have pumped out about 1 million gallons of storm water, but the aquarium's underground passageways remain unusable. On a recent morning, walls and floors were ripped out of several exhibits, including the Sea Cliffs (much loved for its intimate views of walruses cavorting underwater) and the Alien Stingers building.

Some tanks remain drained, while others featured fish swimming in front of empty corridors, the wildlife for once without an audience. Officials said they didn't know when they would reopen these areas.

The aquarium, which is run by the nonprofit Wildlife Conservation Society, had been scheduled to break ground on a $120 million shark exhibit three days after Sandy hit. That project has been delayed at least a year. Officials estimate that additional flood-protection measures—such as raising the new structures, including one to house shark breeding—could raise the price by $3 million to $5 million.

Now officials are instituting a series of upgrades to better match the 100-year flood projections released by FEMA earlier this year. Larger flood protection doors are being installed, air vents are being moved to the roof, and electrical equipment is being repositioned on higher ground.

Officials have restated their commitment to being part of a coalition of government agencies and universities trying to create the Jamaica Bay Science and Resilience Center, which will study how to conserve the sprawling wetland. But there is a role they can play on their own site, too, Mr. Dohlin said.

"We're still working out how we will tell this story in the reopened aquarium," he said. "We have a responsibility and an opportunity to tell this story."

Sandy's devastation was uncharted territory for the aquarium: Despite its oceanfront location, it had never flooded since it relocated to Coney Island from Lower Manhattan in 1957, Mr. Dohlin said.

That isn't to suggest that they took the storm warnings lightly, he added. Staff members spent two days before the storm piling sand bags, checking generators, removing or raising electrical equipment and distributing oxygen canisters around the site. When the power goes out, the canisters can be used to raise the dissolved oxygen in tanks so fish can survive. "It's a slow moving disaster," he said. "You have a lot of warning."

The night of the storm, Mr. Dohlin said, he felt relieved when the waves crept only partway up the Coney Island beach outside—until an employee called to report that water was coming from the other direction.

The Army Corps of Engineers had built up the beach, but the ocean still flows to a creek that curves around the back of Coney Island. Although special doors under the boardwalk had blocked the surge, air vents 7 feet up the walls and other openings were vulnerable.

Some generators had been placed on roofs and survived, but the electrical panels that fed them power were stationed in the basement. Only a gas-powered generator on the roof of the aquarium's hospital continued working.

In the days after the storm, stranded staff members raced through the aquarium plunging oxygen canisters into the tanks and trying to restore power to the filtration systems. About 10 employees lost their own homes in the storm.

Their morale seesawed with a series of unlikely discoveries.

Mr. Dohlin realized that 300 to 500 freshwater koi fish would die when the saltwater surge flooded their pond.

But spirits rose when an American eel, presumed dead, was discovered days later splashing around an employee shower stall.

And the staff was worried about Mitik, an orphaned baby walrus the aquarium had recently adopted. He was still quarantined in the aquarium hospital. Mr. Dohlin laughed when he recalled what he saw when he opened the door to the flooded room: "He's swimming around on his back like he like he'd never seen a pool that big in his life."

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